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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28867302">a modern desperado</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticRobots/pseuds/ApatheticRobots'>ApatheticRobots</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bathing/Washing, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Violence, POV Second Person, Past Character Death, Platonic Relationships, Sharing a Bed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:14:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,560</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28867302</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticRobots/pseuds/ApatheticRobots</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Knock Out is coping, alright?</p><p>He's <em>coping.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Knock Out &amp; Starscream (Transformers), past Breakdown/Knock Out</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a modern desperado</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>wooo this is super old and i only just finished it now. first couple hundred words were done several months ago and the rest of it was done in like three hours. title is from "Outrunning Karma" by uhhhhhhhhhh Alec Benjamin cause i saw an animation of it like several months ago featuring ko and haven't stopped thinking about it since<br/><a href="https://whirlandco.tumblr.com/post/628901237885124609/doodle-machine-guess-what-i-spent-my-long">(this is the animatic btw)</a></p><p>this is like so much of a I Write What I Want thing you dont even know. i dont grieve like a normal person but i think ko should've gotten to. as much as such a thing was possible given the circumstances.</p><p>especially with heavy fics like this, let me know if there's anything that needs to be tagged/warned about that I forgot to mention, and ill update it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"You can't keep doing this."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You'd blame the whining of the saw and the shrieking of steel cutting steel for why you didn't hear him enter, even with how loud the clicking of his heels was against the tiled floor. You heard him speak, though, and it startled you out of your reverie enough that your servo jerked and cut right through the primary charge circuits the blade had been hovering over. The drone was dead before he had a chance to realize what had happened.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Now look what you've gone and done," you murmured, powering your tool down and looking over at him with a pout. "You made me mess up. That one's on you, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Herr Kommandant</span>
  </em>
  <span>."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"But the dozen others aren't." He had a servo resting on one cocked hip, and was staring at you with narrowed, accusatory optics. Clearly not here for a purely friendly visit. Shame. You so rarely got visitors these days, especially for any reason other than them needing medical assistance. Even those were few and far between. The general populace of the ship had deemed it pertinent to leave you well enough alone, and to do their repairs themselves. Part of you was annoyed-- how </span>
  <em>
    <span>dare</span>
  </em>
  <span> they deny your care? How dare they not let you do your one job that was still worth anything? But the rest of you was simply grateful for it. Solitude was better than pitiable attempts at interaction. You supposed they never really came to the medbay to see you, anyway, you just happened to be there, and they were polite enough to make conversation. (Or smart enough not to ignore you.) They’d really come here for--</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Your digits tightened over the dead plating they rested on hard enough to leave divots in it when you pulled them away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Regrettably, he noticed. He tilted his head at the rapidly graying drone laid out on the table. "You're lucky no one's started asking questions yet. A few missing soldiers is nothing noteworthy, but once the numbers have gotten into double digits? Someone's going to start paying attention. Then what will you say?"</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Doctor knows best," you retorted immediately, looking over the corpse that sat before you. You'd already marked all the parts that would be useful later with a little red marker. You were getting ready to remove it all when he'd walked in and made you slip. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>How dare he intrude? This was </span>
  <em>
    <span>your</span>
  </em>
  <span> space. What right did he have to tell you what to do while you were in it? </span>
  <em>
    <span>You</span>
  </em>
  <span> were the primary medic here. Not him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You rounded on him with sudden bared teeth, weapon raised, but his expression made you stop. Because it wasn't the cold condescension you'd been expecting, the sort he so often wore. It was dull acceptance, understanding, and no small amount of pity. You would normally hate having the latter directed at you if it wasn't also accompanied by the first two things.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"You can't keep doing this," he said again, quieter this time. Then, a moment later; "it won't bring him back."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You knew that. You knew that </span>
  <em>
    <span>quite</span>
  </em>
  <span> well. Nothing would bring him back, no matter how many frames you tore apart or experiments you performed. You knew that.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It still hurt hearing it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You turned back to the cadaver, still and cold and in pieces because you needed something to hurt as much as you did. It was the drone's own fault he'd decided to be walking past your medbay when you got into one of your moods. It was also his own fault for falling for your hooded optics and lowered voice and beckoning digits. You’d think they’d have learned better by now, to know what the looks you threw their way </span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> meant. Then again, you’re not sure how they would have learned. It wasn’t like any of their friends ever left the encounters alive to tell them the truth. To warn them not to fall for such an alluring sight. (A wolf in buymech’s clothing, perhaps.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You only realized you'd gotten lost in thought staring at the corpse when the click of heels and a servo on your shoulder startled you out of it. Again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In a voice so uncharacteristically soft for him, he spoke; "Would Breakdown want this?"</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Don't," you said instantly. Tightly. There was a painful twisting in your chassis as the name passed your audials. "Don't mention him. Don't bring him up. It--" You stopped short. Because you were going to say "it doesn't matter what he would want" because he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>dead</span>
  </em>
  <span> so </span>
  <em>
    <span>nothing</span>
  </em>
  <span> mattered anymore. But if anything still mattered, if there was anything worth </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything </span>
  </em>
  <span>anymore, it was what was left of him. And the answer was no; he wouldn’t have wanted this. He had treated the drones like friends, he talked to them, he cared for them. He would be none too pleased to discover you were treating them as though they were disposable like everyone else did. He might even be upset with you. He never got angry at you, because he cared too much (soft-sparked, you always said) and he was who he was. But on the rare occasions you did something he disapproved of even with his ever-loosening morals, he got this look in his optics, and it could be called nothing but sad disappointment. And it killed you a little bit every time you saw it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wouldn't want this. But he was dead, and you were still here. Why couldn't it have ever been about what </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> wanted? You wanted closure, you wanted revenge. You wanted your partner back. You wanted to feel okay again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I don't care," you said numbly, staring at nothing with your servos shaking. "I don't care, I don't care, I </span>
  <em>
    <span>don't--"</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He didn't hug you, because he wouldn't, and you wouldn't have wanted him to, but his grip on your shoulder tightened. Just a little bit. Just enough to ground you, to remind you that this was real and you were here. (As much as you might have preferred to forget.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I miss him."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I know." It wasn't dismissive; it was just the truth. He knew you missed your partner. And he knew what it was like missing someone after they were gone. So he wasn't dismissing your grief, and he wasn't expecting anything of you. He was simply acknowledging reality for what it was.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Not that you would ever say it-- his ego was big enough-- but you admired his worldview every now and again. His tenacity was greater than you could ever hope to achieve. He’d taken so many hits and yet he just kept getting back up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The servo on your shoulder tightened again. You could feel the prick of claws, though you knew he'd never put enough force into it to scratch. (Not on purpose, anyways.) He leaned closer, the hand not resting on you coming around to gently grip your wrist, and you took the prompt for what it was and transformed your circular saw away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Come to berth, Knock Out," he said quietly. "You've been up for too long. You need rest."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Alright," you said, hardly protesting as he nudged you to get you moving and guided you along, through the warship’s silent halls. Not towards your room, no doubt cold and gathering dust with how much you hadn’t gone anywhere near it since the other inhabitant had stopped coming home. But towards his own, far away from where you might hazard running into anyone else. "If you insist. But you had better not leave me asleep for any longer than a few hours, I'm this ship's sole medic, and I can't afford to be out of commission for too long. I have a job to do."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"I know." </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"It's </span>
  <em>
    <span>important,"</span>
  </em>
  <span> you insisted, because you kind of felt like he wasn't getting it. “I’m important.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He gave you a look, one that you were just a little too tired to try and decipher now that exhaustion was creeping over your processor. "I know."</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You were pretty sure you were muttering quietly as he continued guiding you down to the darker bowels of the ship, but he was polite enough not to mention it. You’d have to thank him later, when you were feeling a little more like an actual mech and not the living personification of fatigue in the shape of a Cybertronian.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Or maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe it would be better if you just didn’t acknowledge… whatever this was. Maybe he’d take your silent discretion as a more significant sign of gratitude than anything you could put into words.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The state of your processor was evident enough when you blinked and found yourself idling in front of his door while he input the security code, with no memory of the majority of the walk through the ship. Primus, but you hoped you hadn’t done or said anything embarrassing. Not that you had much dignity to keep anymore, especially considering the lows he’d seen you at, but whatever the little decorum still remained in your dull frame was worth at least attempting to keep a hold of.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Speaking of your dull frame.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He brought you inside, closing the door behind you and seating you down on the berth. When he flicked on the overhead lights and turned to you, his expression soured, and he looked over you with a critical optic. “When was the last time you bothered to clean yourself up?” he asked, disgust evident in his tone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You couldn’t find it in yourself to care. In lieu of a proper response, you just shrugged.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That got you a scoff, as well as some muttering you couldn’t hear, and he disappeared through another door for a moment. Then he returned, grabbed your arm and dragged you through the same door, and you abruptly sputtered as you found yourself with a faceful of heated solvent. The sudden change in environment was enough to snap you out of your haze to at least some degree, and you fumbled to wipe the stinging liquid from your optics. “Starscream, what--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hush,” he interrupted, and his words were followed by the feeling of soft cloth dragging over your plating. You glanced over to see him standing at your back, one servo braced on your shoulder while the other ran a washrag across the dried energon and grit clinging to you.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Part of you wanted to protest, say you were perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but apparently your thought process was evident enough because his optics snapped up to glare at you the second your vocalizer clicked on to complain. The “obviously you can’t” was clear even without him putting words to it. And… well, he wasn’t wrong. So you just stood there and let him wash several days of exhaustion from your frame. Watched the solvent and grime spiral down the drain.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Within time you were dirt-free with your head feeling clearer than it had in days. He turned the solvent off (and you’d have to ask how he got it hot, the ship ran on reserve power constantly these days and apparently one of those luxuries you couldn’t afford were heated washracks) and shuffled you over to the drier. He worked in tandem with it, scrubbing at any spots where the dried solvent left stains with a soft towel that was also a little too nice for what was technically wartime. Maybe you shouldn’t have been surprised, though-- he was one of the few mechs you knew who still appreciated any amount of decadence in this day and age.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sufficiently dry for his taste, he gave a firm nod and ushered you back out to stand in the main room. He crouched to rifle through a nearby cabinet, and a moment later stood, a buffer not unlike one of the many you owned clutched in his digits.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Static gathered low in your chassis.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When was the last time anyone had done this for you? (Rhetorical question; you knew, of course, you remembered it vividly. Because it was one of the last interactions you’d had with poor Breakdown before he’d gone and gotten himself offlined. It had been the night before he had left. You had asked, and he had been happy to comply, and once your plating had been shined to your satisfaction he’d kissed you and told you how gorgeous you looked.) </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hold still,” he said, voice low, and you did as told. At the first press of the tool against your frame, your optics welled with entirely unbidden tears, and you couldn’t have stopped the choked noise you gave at the vibrations against your plating. It was familiar, </span>
  <em>
    <span>too</span>
  </em>
  <span> familiar, and it had been too long since you’d gotten this without having to contort your frame and do it yourself.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Duteously, he did not say a single word about your emotional display. Just continued smoothing over the scuffs littered over your frame, pointedly ignoring how you buried your face in your servos and sobbed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>Eventually he ran out of scrapes to buff, and you refrained from asking him to leave it sitting there for a little longer. There was such a thing as too much preening, after all. Overuse of a buffer risked pulling the paint right off the plating, and not only did that sting, but it was so much of a trial to fix with how limited their supplies were. And how much of a hassle it was to acquire new ones. (For all he’d never cared about his appearance, Breakdown had quite the optic for color, and never failed to pick up the exact shade of paint that matched your own cherry red whenever you ran out and asked him to make a pitstop on his way home.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>You sniffed, wiping at your optics, and he quietly handed you a cloth to dry your face. When you only marginally looked like you’d just spent the better half of an hour crying your spark out, he took it back. Dropped it somewhere to be dealt with later. Then gracefully slipped into the berth that was piled with so much finery it was a wonder where he found it all, beckoning you to join him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Much like the unsuspecting drone from earlier had done, you accepted his invitation without a second thought. Hopefully unlike the drone, though, you were not about to meet your grisly (if accidental) end.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>One positive concession was that he did not have nearly as inconvenient a shape as Breakdown did, and it was easy for him to find a place to slot against your frame. You hadn’t realized how dearly you missed the feeling of sleeping with another mech beside you until you felt his gentle spark-pulse where your plating was pressed together. Until the warmth of his ventilations brushed over your chassis. Until a slim pair of arms wrapped around your middle, careful enough to not scratch your freshly-polished plating but firm enough that you couldn’t pretend you were anywhere else but here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Couldn’t lose yourself to mourning like you had earlier.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Recharge, Knock Out,” he murmured, vocalizer thrumming where he was nuzzled into the crook of your plating. “It will seem better in the morning.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Closing your optics and letting your mind drift, you were almost willing to let yourself believe it.</span>
</p>
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